Offstage, a production assistant unpacked plates of pickles and cold cuts from New York’s famed Katz’s Delicatessen. Onstage, a singer clad in sparkling, billowing pants and a bright pink hair bow adopted a cockney accent and belted out an unlikely Broadway rouser: “Who’s That Geezer Hitler?” On this Monday morning, holed up in a low-ceilinged…
In “Changing Places,” a terrific academic novel by David Lodge, a professor and his colleagues play a literary parlor game called “Humiliation.” In the game, the players attempt to one-up each other in admissions of ignorance by confessing the most inexcusable examples of books they haven’t read. When Professor Howard Ringbaum admits he never read…
(JTA) — Historian Ron Chernow has written successful biographies of the likes of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and George Washington. So it’s fair to say that at this point in his career, the Alexander Hamilton biographer knows the drill: There’s the author tour, the positive reviews, the making of the best-seller lists. There…
I never expected to hear Yiddish in the lobby of the Richard Rodgers Theatre for “Hamilton, the hip hop mega hit musical. “Do you know how to get to your seat?” asked the feisty petite, blonde senior veteran usher who had just told a theatergoer “We’re all mamelige,” a reference to corn meal mush and…
“I’ve always been in love with dance and always will be,” honoree Joel Grey told the audience at the 33rd Annual Fred & Adele Astaire Awards 2015 held at NYU Skirball Center of the Performing Arts. Recipient of the Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award, Grey lauded a roster of Broadway choreographers noting: “My life was…
The magic of Broadway is far more than the amazing casts’ ability to do it — and do it right — eight times a week. The magic is the ability to stage something original (or sometimes translate it from film) that speaks to a broad audience. That touches their hearts. And, sometimes, tells a story…
Two years ago, I took a morning off work to attend my childhood rabbi’s funeral. Ours wasn’t an observant family, and I really didn’t have any relationship with the rabbi beyond my decades-ago bar mitzvah, but Jehiel Orenstein, of Congregration Beth El in South Orange, N.J., was a nice man and a good man, a…
When I first meet Helen Mirren, the actress pauses before she shakes my hand. Instead, she goes for the hand sanitizer. “I’m appearing in a play,” she says, “and I’m deathly afraid of catching a cold.” I suggest a fist bump instead, but once sanitized she goes with the more traditional route. Mirren is currently…
דער זשורנאַל, גרויס ווי אַ גאַנץ בוך, נעמט אויך אַרײַן טײַגע־לידער און פֿאַקטאַזיע־ווערק.
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